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Death and transplants
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
Listening today to BBC Radio 4's "Sunday" programme, I learned that there is a real debate going on among Jews about when, precisely, death occurs. The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain has declared that death, according to Jewish tradition, occurs when the heart irrevocably stops. This is in the context of questions about harvesting of organs for transplant after brain-stem death but while the heart is still beating, which is required for some transplant procedures.
As one commentator pointed out, there are questions about when human life begins as well as when it ends.
For those who are directly involved in the harvesting of organs, even more than for those of us who carry donor cards, there is a real dilemma.
As Buddhists or as Jews, we urges - if not commanded - not to kill. Seems straight forward enough, except at that limiting moment where the medics have decided on a different definition of the moment of death from the 'classical'. From personal testimonies among memebrs here, we have learned how painful a dilemma this is.
Although I can see 'scriptural' arguments on both sides, or, perhaps, because, I see this as a paradigm case of the problems that arise when science obliges us to move goal posts. In effect, there are now, for many people, at least two times of death, which may be separated by days, or even longer.
As one commentator pointed out, there are questions about when human life begins as well as when it ends.
For those who are directly involved in the harvesting of organs, even more than for those of us who carry donor cards, there is a real dilemma.
As Buddhists or as Jews, we urges - if not commanded - not to kill. Seems straight forward enough, except at that limiting moment where the medics have decided on a different definition of the moment of death from the 'classical'. From personal testimonies among memebrs here, we have learned how painful a dilemma this is.
Although I can see 'scriptural' arguments on both sides, or, perhaps, because, I see this as a paradigm case of the problems that arise when science obliges us to move goal posts. In effect, there are now, for many people, at least two times of death, which may be separated by days, or even longer.
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Comments
If a living body after brain death can be killed, then cooking grains amounts to killing because grains can germinate under proper conditions.
The same Q is a variation of what constitutes life or "I"
Do you see the problem for the ICU staff? and the transplant teams?
All of this - the entire argument - is, to me, simply a manifestation of the fear of death. We feel the need to precisely quantify so we know that a person is or isn't 'dead' at a given moment. I just don't think it's that easy.
Gotta go with brain death. No more electrical activity in the brain means the person is gone. Like a fire, once big with smoke and flame, the last dim red glow of light signals the end of a fire.
As someone suggested above: there is no "CPR" for brains. In decades of modern medical history NOBODY has ever ever returned from brain death.
It it were I, with a dead brain, I'd want to call it quits. I'd see myself as troubling problem for too many people while I had the chance to improve someone else's life.
Let every individual with a driver's license, SS number, passport DEFINE when life ends for them! End of debate! :clap:
If I had to go to "hell" for making a mistake by wrongly defining when life ends: so what? My ___intention___ was pure: to help others and not be a burden to society.
1. Well, a person cannot really be called dead when his heart stops ( cardiac arrest, anyone ? ). If that person is given aid in time, it will be 'fine'.
About transplants, what's the deal with taking an organ out of a living being? ( defined by that rabbi). I mean, you can take an organ, like liver (a part of it; liver regenarates if a part of it is severed or heavily affected), or a kidney and make a transplant, and both donor and acceptor will live for some years.
2. That commentator was right. No one can put a term when life starts and when it ends. Those things are not objective(exact). If this thing would happen, there would be a lot of arguments about when abortions should be properly done or not(life start), and when to disconnect a brain-dead person from the devices that keeps his body functioning (life end).
3. Not to kill...when it comes to medicine , it's a tough decision. For this thing, Medical Ethics was established. But, even in this scenario, the final decision of killing a person who is brain-dead and kept alive artificially is not really taken by the medics ( as I know; need counter-argument here), but by the family ( if it has one) of the patient.
4. Two times of death ? How? If I were to take that rabbi seriously, then a person who enters cardiac arrest is officially dead ? And if I add brain death, then the person dies a second time ( supposing it was given aid) ?
IMO, a person is dead when he stops breathing, his pulse is zero, his brain activity is again, zero, and the response to stimuli is, as I said, zero, all at the same time. Or , I can wait until the body enters the rigor mortis state(joking).
Are we agreed that this is the current state of medical opinion? Notice, of course, that this is an opinion and not a scientific certainty based on quite recent observations and conclusions.
What is at issue is that a significant number of people, not just those referring to "ancient texts", consider the beating of the heart and the continued coherence of the body which does not begin to decay as signs of life.
Here is the problem: how do we define 'life'? How do the medical staff define it for themselves when they are instructed to turn off the 'life support', a telling phrase, don't you think? Families are persuaded that 'doctor knows best' and are told that lack of brain stem activity is the gold standard criterion.
So today there's some confusion and reservations about the heart beating. It's basically old superstitions.
Now we do know what the brain is for. So for most educated people who are not clinging to old religious principles: when the brain stops life stops.
I'm very sorry I'm so assertive about this issue. I had to deal with this first hand with a loved one.
No brain = No person = No Human life = harvest those useful organs at the "convenience" of those desperate sick people who need them!
The following is rather silly but there' a point:
If there WERE life with no brain and I was terminated under those cicumstances so people would benefit from my organs (IOW, the medical establishment DID "kill" brainless me) I would have ZERO negative feelings in whatever, whichever afterlife. I would NOT want to be a burden to society and a prolonged emotional burden to my family and I would be glad to help others in exchange. Dying or getting "killed" for an EXCELLENT cause, as it were! What's wrong with that!?
My deep sympathy that you have had to face this question in real life. Please believe that I am deliberately addressing the dilemma as dilemma, rather than from certainty. I also recognise, as, I am sure, do you that others hold different conclusions)
I can hear arguments from the no heart=no life/heart=life proponents too. And I am aware that their arguments may come from completely different belief contexts. They may not find that knowing how the brain works may not necessarily imply that we know what it is for. Some might argue that our new understandings are signs that new knowledge, particularly in medicine/surgery, supplants and discredits the old certainties. Might this "brain=life" equation be, one day, as risible as some mediaeval superstition?
Both views are sincerely held and some of us - myself included - as I approach my own death and have been with loved ones and strangers as they died, some of us are just not convinced by either side.
The problem is, of course, complicated by the matter of those organs which must - at our current state of knowledge - come from a body with a beating heart. That there is any debate at all demonstrates that this is a point of puzzlement and controversy, of painful emotion and confusion.
Medical orthodoxy is currently precisely as you describe it, Roger. It is the respected and respectable opinion, and end-of-life procedures in our hospitals are tooled up accordingly. I believe that this is for the benefit of the majority. At the same time, it would be both uncaring and counter-productive to dismiss or belittle the deep sense of 'wrongness' that a possibly significant number of people experience at the idea of organs being removed from a body where the heart is still beating, even if someone else may benefit.
It is how we address this dilemma that concerns me. Petit bourgeois and personal my old Marxist friends would call me. They may be right: the emotional 'heat' and consequent unskillful situations engage me.
My friend's dad's brain died while he was in the car with him, I forget why. He had to 'pull the plug'. A couple weeks ago.
After my dad's three weeks of brain death he finally died; his heart stopped by itself. Wow! Were we "lucky!"
Before the heart-failure end there were three weeks of searching during which my family became convinced my dad was ___GONE___.
If we had to pull the plug months later and that "killed" what was left of him somewhere, we were all sure my dad would have gladly agreed with our decision.
He would have been happy to have "sacrificed" himself (indeed, what was left of him!) to end our agonizing and he would have been happy his organs might be used by someone younger with more life to enjoy ahead of them.
Too bad people can't figure this stuff out until they have to experience it directly for themselves. Until then, IMO obviously, it'll be a recurrence of wasted time accompanied by needless emotional trauma.
Thanks again for the chance to review my feelings on this matter.